HYT

The Haileybury Youth Trust is the successor to the Haileybury Club in Stepney.

Russell Matcham (HM of Kipling) is the link at Haileybury for the HYT, and writes:

Trev helps HYT

The work in KIZIGO, the second beneficiary of our 'One Village at a Time' project, was completed on time and in budget. I hope you agree the results are impressive. Increasing numbers of poor Ugandans have their lives improved by HYT, with Haileyburians and Ugandans working in partnership. There are now dozens of young HYT-trained Ugandans who have construction skills that will improve both opportunity and prospects. HYT's work is sustainable and life-enhancing for Ugandans; life-enriching for Haileyburians.

The third of our 'One Villages', Namaganda, lies deep in the Ugandan bush. Even by Ugandan standards it is very poor indeed. Although its school buildings were condemned as unsafe some years ago, children are still taught here. Namaganda really is off the beaten track but its people are determined to help themselves out of the poverty trap into which they were born.

With your wonderful support, HYT will transform this impoverished village, its schools and the lives of its people.

Children aged 7 at Kizigo primary school in the new school room

Russell has also forwarded news of Sam Edwards, a current gap year student whose work has been highly commended, describing him as 'a wonderful ambassador for his old school and the [Haileybury] Society'

You can donate to the HYT here:

www.justgiving.com/hyt

Or use one of the methods described here.

Rodney Galpin RIP

Rodney Galpin
President OH Society 1987-88

Rodney Galpin (M 45) has died at the age of 79. He was chairman of Standard Chartered 'the bankers to the Raj,' after having been a senior regulator at the Bank of England. When I was on the General Committee in the early 90s as a representative of recent Haileyburians he was incredibly kind and thoughtful to one who knew nothing about money. Others have said how he thought of them and have spoken of his kindness. He was President of the Society in 1987 - 1988.

In 2007 Rodney commissioned a centenary artwork for the Scout HQ at Gilwell Park in memory of his father, Sir Albert Galpin KCVO.

May he rest in peace.

Cars

I still walk quickly because there were only five minutes to get from, for instance, the Art School or the Whatton Block to the Science Labs or Bradby. I have never been good in the mornings either, and the payback for maximising time in bed was the rush to get to breakfast on time from Hailey.

We have learned this week that visionaries are thinking about rocket - planes to cut the travel time from London to Sydney to two hours.

It is noticeable how many cars there are nowadays around Haileybury. There are many more day pupils than once there were, and many of those who, like my boys, board, go home most weekends. Parents come to watch games in large numbers and attend things at school much more than in the days when we were dropped off for eleven weeks of no contact except by post. Many senior pupils have cars. Car parks are springing up: on the corner of XX Acre; on the lawn outside the Batten entrance to the KBM block; by the mini range on the edge of Hailey Field, and anywhere people can park a car.

With the cars come notices and yellow lines and so on. I suppose it is inevitable, but it does seem a shame.

Reading

Returning to the 'Proud Father' theme from Sunday evening's post, seeing No3 reading in chapel as the youngest boy in the school (he will not be 12 until next August), I was put in mind of the reading I did as one of the youngest (my birthday falls in June) in my first term at Haileybury.

London Weekend Television broadcasted the Remembrance Sunday service from the Chapel in November 1979, and I was asked to read the scripture passage (it was the Beatitudes in Matthew Ch5). It was all a very last minute arrangement and I was whisked out of lessons to be drilled in getting it right. I remember the Chaplains (Peter Lewis and Jim Pullen) were pretty stressed.

I decided not to tell anyone in House that I was doing the reading; not sure why, I suppose I thought I might not be believed and that I might be thought to be showing off - a sure way to get taken down a peg or two. I remember sprucing myself up to be all neat and then having to help tidy up the VI From corridor kitchen ready for Sunday House inspection, and getting all messy in the process.

When the moment finally came I was put on the end of the row in Chapel, and the prefect sitting next to me thought I had gone mad when I got up to go and read.

It was the days before video recording was common. I seem to remember seeing a recording once some years later, but I don't know if it is anywhere preserved.

Harvest

The Indian Summer is keeping the grounds staff busy. The whole place looks immaculate as always, but it has a feel of Summer about it even as the leaves turn on the trees.

On Saturday they were mowing the grass.

Harvest

In my new peripatetic life going from one church to another and not having a specific parish of my own, I have missed any Harvest Festival this year. So singing "We plough the fields and scatter," in Chapel tonight at the new pupils' chapel service was a joy, where in previous years I might have thought 'Oh no, not again!'

I was playing proud father as No3 son shared reading the prayers, and also proud President as the other Lower School reader is also the child of an OH, the daughter of Andrew Hine (Tr 1979), who was an exact contemporary of mine. I don't think I had seen Andrew since we left Haileybury in 1984 until he greeted me in the meleé of parents dropping their children on the first day of term. One of the extraordinary things about my year as President and just being around Haileybury again, has been to meet people again after a lifetime.